Kin
by Sparks94
Summary: After Harriet went through an irrevocable change that shakes the foundation of all that she knew to be true, Sirius Black went in search for something Harry only knows as J.D. He went missing. Remus followed his steps, only to disappear too. Now it's Harry's turn to join the hunt, Merlin help them all... Fem!Harry/Clay, heavy doses of Jeremy and all around pack mentality.
1. Prologue

**Summary:** After Harriet went through an irrevocable change that shakes the foundation of all that she knew to be true, Sirius Black went in search for something Harry only knows as J.D. He went missing. Remus followed his steps, only to disappear too. Now it's Harry's turn to join the hunt, Merlin help them all... Fem!Harry/Clay, heavy doses of Jeremy and all around pack mentality.

 **Set:** After all Harry potter books, very early season one of bitten (Mixture of show and books for bitten).

 **Warnings:** Fem!Harry, Werewolves, bloodiness (later on), profanity, Au, bent Cannon, Slash side pairing,mentions of abuse, death, drinking, violence. - Stop reading now if you do not like any of these.

 _No Beta! All mistakes are mine._

* * *

 _~Prologue- I've got you~_

Harriet Potter had never quite felt like she did right then, curled and wrought on her bed at Grimmauld place, drenched in sweat, linen blankets pooled and tangled around her feet, pushed and kicked away because they felt like sandpaper grating against her sensitive goose-pimpled flesh.

Grimmauld place was silent, apart from the occasional groan that escaped her cracked lips and sore throat. Sirius and Remus were out for the evening, likely in a cosy restaurant if Remus had his way or a dubiously seedy pub if Sirius had his. All Harry knew was she missed their easy banter that would normally drift up from the floorboards beneath her, a soft lullaby to sing her to sleep. She wished she could sleep now, especially when the tremble in her limbs turned to full spasms and cramps.

Her aching teeth sank into the tender flesh of her cheek, holding back the scream that wanted to burst forth through ripped vocal cords. She felt the strange urge to chew and gnaw at the zingy copper taste that bubbled onto her tongue, to savagely lap and lick at the thick substance trickling down her throat, easing that soreness before it came blazing back to life tenfold.

Another wave hit her, contorting her chest and posture, squeezing her, tightening around her like barbed wire, muscles, hot and hard searing her bones. However, no matter the amount of pain that ran rampant through her, she couldn't scream, couldn't shout for help, couldn't even whimper out a name, her voice box letting out nothing but hollow whimpers and groans into the night. She felt truly alone then, left under the crashing waves to weather the onslaught of pain.

In retrospect, it had all started out innocently enough. The urge to run was the first sign, something Harry had already been doing since the end of the greatest wizarding war her kind had ever seen. A jog every morning helped keep the nightmares at bay, helped expel the pent up energy that sizzled through her blood, helped stop those flashes of dead bodies she saw on closed eyelids every time she bloody blinked.

Sirius, as odd as it was, had taken to cooking. Remus had started making crockery, as terrible as it was, though she nor Sirius told him such. Hermione took up yoga. Ron, well, Ron had started to enjoy the muggle sport of boxing after Hermione and she had introduced him to it one late autumn Saturday. How different and foreboding could the urge to run be compared to everyone else's coping mechanisms? A lot, apparently. Especially if you happened to be Harriet Potter.

The next hint had been the insatiable hunger that mangled her gut. Unfortunately, it was another easy thing to explain away for Harry. She had grown up on rations, left-overs dumped in the bin by the Dursley's she would sneak out and find during the dead of the night, scoffing down as much as she can as the family slumbered away upstairs. The Horcrux hunt hadn't exactly been a bounty of feasts either. So, when she began asking Sirius for seconds and thirds, her guardians had only been too happy to do just that without a question asked. Sirius had rejoiced over a hissing frying pan of bacon and eggs, cracking more into the pan with a squelch and fizz as she sheepishly asked for more, joking how she was finally putting some meat on her bones. The subsequent growth spurt was simply put down to finally eating right, the weight of the war now gone leaving her to grow as she should have from the very beginning.

Of course with the growth spurt and extra intake of food would lead to more energy than she had ever felt before, a prickling at the back of the neck that told her to just… Do. That was just logical common sense. Common sense if you were anyone other than Harry with her patented type of luck. Anyhow, why would she complain when it made Teddy so happy?

The boy was boisterous on a good day, on his worse he was a downright hellion and Merlin knows Sirius and Remus were not in their prime any more, leaving Harry to keep up with the whirlwind. She had never gotten to simply play when she had been a child, doing so with Teddy, precious Teddy, well, it gave her that little chunk of missing childhood she didn't know she had missed.

Then the tingling had come a week ago, right at the base of her spine, a little knot of squirming in her tail bone. It was a hard thing to explain without one having felt it personally, the best Harry could describe to it was broken Christmas lights embedded in her skin, still crackling to life with the throbbing in her spine. It set her on edge, a precipice, one foot dangling over the ridge, waiting to drop… Into what? She had no clue.

However, faced with the peace and tranquillity of a life she never thought she would have, an actual home she loved dearly in Grimmauld place with snarky Sirius, restful Remus and tittering Teddy, people she would give more than an arm and leg for if the need ever called for it… A family she had only ever dreamed of in that dingy cupboard of hers, she hadn't wanted to crush that, disturb the still pond with what she had put down to a straightforward case of the flu.

They had all been through so much, dammit, Harry, herself had died. Sirius had fought his way back to the waking world through the veil, something he never spoke about but Harry could see the haunting ghosts flickering in his gunmetal eyes. While Harry had not been fast enough to save lovable Tonks, something that still weighed heavy on her concious, nightmares of fingers just out of reach, she had managed to fling Remus out of the blast. And although it left him grieving a lost mate, Harry, as bad as it sounded, couldn't be that sorry when he would live to see his son grow and Teddy, her own godson wouldn't be sanctioned to a fate she had lived, that of a war orphan.

However, to be completely fair, she would have never let Teddy live the life she had, not while she had breath in her lungs and a pumping heart. So, faced with this hard earned peace, you would forgive Harry if she thought to weather the sniffles without disturbing anyone. Be that as it may, as it always did when Harry was brought up, nothing was as simple or as expected and this? This was definitely no seasonal allergy she was dealing with.

The two brilliant but annoyingly idiotic men had finally come to terms with their feelings and had planned an outing together that night, like hell would Harry ruin that for them when it had taken so many years to get to this point, especially when she had, while underhandedly, pushed the two to this outcome with sly comments here and there, a broken promise of meeting them some place, only to leave them alone together. They had been obnoxiously dancing around each other for months and Harry couldn't take much more, so yes, she may have had a part in it, but the outcome would have been the same without her presence, only it would have taken even more years to get to that point. So sue her for wanting to see her godparents, her guardians happy for once.

The tingles had mutated to an itch that day, an itch that ran marrow deep, leaving Harry to idly scratch and claw at her skin with an absent mind, brushing off Sirius's and Remus's worried glances with porcelain smiles, as fake as a doll's. She had soldiered on, planning to get Teddy to bed and sleep the whole cold off, waving the couple off at Grimmauld's door, a babbling Teddy perched on her hip, promising everything would be fine for the few hours they had planned to have together.

The wrenching pain had not come until Teddy was snoring away in bed, tucked safely in, the moon casting the room in a pale wash. She had only been in bed an hour herself, tossing and turning, sleep evading every attempt she tried to grasp at its slippery tendrils. Now, however, in the throes of what felt like her own body trying to consume itself, twisting and churning she thought she may-haps… Probably… Definitely should have made an appointment at St. Mungo's

 _Crack._

Harry groaned as her neck twisted sharply, the action burying her face into the plush velvet pillow beneath her, now feeling like pine needles to the skin of her flushed face, damp hair plastered to her back and forehead. Heaving and gagging made her curl further in on herself, climbing bile charring the soft flesh of her throat, although thankfully, nothing came out. Harry didn't know if she had the strength to move and she really didn't want to lay in her own vomit. Merlin… She felt like she was dying.

It wasn't a troll that would kill her. It wasn't a three-headed dog. It wasn't a sixty-foot Basilisk. It wasn't Dementors. No dragon, mermaid, maze or tournament. No Voldemort to send her off with a cruel remark and sick grin. It was some unknown feverish ailment that made her feel like she was made from spun sugar, weak and fragile. That is what was going to ship her off to the afterlife. Just her bloody luck.

 _No!_

This would not be the day she finally died. She wouldn't allow it to be. She had not lived through what she had, been through what she had, seen what she had, done what she had to do, to die alone, scared, weak and helpless in bed. There was only one way she would die and that would be standing, staring death in the face or she would not die at all.

White knuckles glistened in the moonlight as they relinquished their hold on the sheet beneath her, joints cracking as she forced them to clasp the edge of the bed, groaning deeply as she rolled onto her stomach. The breeze from the open windows did nothing to quell the heat picking up in her core, hell-fire of flames flickering through her body.

With a heave, gag and groan, Harry slipped to the edge of the bed, determined to get to the flu network in the downstairs parlour to ring through to St. Mungo's, to Hermione, to Molly, to anyone who could take this torrential pain away from her breaking body. With one last push, her arms gave out from underneath her, leaving her to tumble off the messy bed with a thwack and crash against hardwood flooring, her head whacking off the floor harshly, sending the world around her into a free fall spin. None of it registered in her foggy brain, hazed by insurmountable pain, not when in competition for her attention with the pain grinding like rusty gears through her very being, her core, the damned red cells that made up her body.

Suppressing everything but the urge to survive that reared its head, Harry tried to stand only for her legs to quake and bend unnaturally, refusing to comply with her screaming mind, abandoning her to drag herself across the floor, forwards and towards the slither of whiskey coloured light spilling through the bottom crack of the door, the lone thing she could focus on, her eyesight failing when the light she saw began to pulsate and grow in flashes, her nails squawking and scratching grooves into the wood as she hauled herself forward inch by inch.

She was only a foot away when her arms snapped and bent to her chest, her body careening and twisting upon itself, limbs jerking and straining, tearing and cracking in the most sickening way, spine arching and elongating and finally… Finally did that horrifying scream locked in her lungs wrenched its way to open air. The world around her flared to life in multi colour, only to flicker to black at a migraine inducing intervals, along with the excruciating pain, forcing her to cram her eyes closed, teeth bared and nose wrinkled. The world around her faded away, leaving only that pain in its wake, leaving her to its abyss.

Her scream was lost to her ears, her name was lost to her mind, everything but that pain gone, taken from her under the tsunami that hit her solidly as she felt like she was being ripped apart atom by atom, reassembling into something unfathomable. She was lost completely in it when the pounding of footsteps rang out from the hallway, the light flooding the room when the bedroom door was flung open, banging like a gun shot against the wall, two silhouettes she knew all too well pausing in the door frame, haloed by the light.

"Harry what-… Harry? Harriet!"

Sirius made a dash for Harry's crumbled form, squirming and warping on the floor, just outside the bubble of light cast from the hallway. However, he only made it two steps when Remus's arm shot out, blocking him, holding him back from his agonized god-daughter. Flickering his gaze to Remus, he noticed the arched flare of his nostrils as he took in a deep drag of air, moist and poignant, deep frown blocking out all light to his eyes. That, however, didn't stop the amber flash of Remus's eyes glowing momentarily. Obviously whatever he had scented had struck a cord in his brain, the animalistic part, his voice gruff and haggard as he snarled out one word.

"Wolf."

Sirius shook his head, scoffing slightly. He didn't care what Remus smelled, Harry was obviously in trouble. Bulldozing passed Remus, Sirius made his way to Harry's contorting and writhing form, falling to his knees beside her, his hand just about to brush her shoulder, to drag her to him, readying to bark an order at Remus to get a medi-witch when he saw it. Through the curtain of her limp and damp hair, he saw her eye, pupil blown wide, iris expanded, no white at all in her eye socket, the skin around it rippling and re-constructing. The sound of crunching bone rattling out dropped his gaze to her jaw, just in time to see it dislocate and morph. No… No… Harry had never been bit… It couldn't be… He was still frozen when he felt Remus's arms wrap around his torso, dragging and yanking him backwards, Remus's normally placid and calm voice, the voice of reason most often, turned rushed and panicked. An inhuman snarl blistered out.

"Don't get too close! That was just a warning… But it doesn't smell right…"

Sirius was left prone at the door thresh hold,grasping onto Remus, eyes wide, bewildered as the screaming grew deeper, biting, savage snarling taking up rhythm only to be broken by the tempo of barks and painful howls. Finally the crescendo ended with the sound of tearing fabric and crackling bone, black fur sprouting from once peaches and cream skin. After what felt like a lifetime, huddled at the door, it abruptly ended with a plod of a mass hitting the floor and ravenous panting gulping in air.

"Remus… Harry's not bitten… What… How-"

"Shhhhh."

Remus's arms tightened around him, one arm unwrapping to grasp a hold of his wand, readying as a floorboard creaked out from the darkness of the room. One creak, two creaks, three creaks. Then, finally, an ink black snout pressed into the bubble of light surrounding them, not misshapen like Remus's own when he transformed, followed by a paw and then another before the wolf's eyes glittered into being. Brilliant emerald, intelligent eyes, not that of what either Sirius or Remus had suspected when the thought of werewolf had rang through their minds.

The eyes of a human, not a beast drowned in hunger and madness. That thought was only solidified by the whining that rumbled through the wolf's body, ringing like a morning bell through the air as it slinked into the light fully, ears drawn back and pinned down to scalp. The onyx wolf was the same size as a normal wolf, no hybrid mutations, disjointed limbs, patchy hair like that of a werewolf… Like Remus. The wolf pressed down to the floor, belly fur scraping the floorboards as it crawled forward, towards them.

Remus finally glanced out of the open window, seeing the crescent moon shining in the sky. How? Werewolves needed a full moon to transform… How had Harry-… Without being bitten… Being female as well, they just didn't make the change, nor survive the bite alone… Merlin knows Fenrir had gruesomely tried… But the smell, it couldn't be anything else… While Remus was distracted by his jumbled thoughts, Sirius fought his way out of his stronghold, shakily raising his hand up, palm to the ceiling, towards the wolf, watching avidly as the cold, wet nose brushed his fingertips before nuzzling into his palm, a drawn out whine echoing around them.

For Sirius, that was all the confirmation he needed as he met the wolf half way, arms open wide, knees unforgivably banging against the floor. The wolf, as trembling as it was, slid closer, whimpers and whines dripping out. Sirius knew those eyes, knew them no matter where they were or what skull they were in. It was Harry. Harry in all ways.

"Oh, Harry. It's alright. It's fine. You're fine. You're okay. I've got you… I've got you."

The wolf… Harry pressed herself closer to Sirius as he wrapped her up in an embrace, the whimpers slowing and quieting but never stopping. Feeling a warm palm his shoulder, Sirius glanced up and over, spotting Remus's worried and drawn face, gaze flickering between him and the wolf that was obviously Harry… Somehow Harry.

"I'll… I'll get a fire started in the study with some Fire whiskey, I think we're going to need it to figure… This out. Come down when you're both calm. It looks like it's going to be a long night."

Sirius nodded, his hand going up to squeeze at Remus's reassuringly, watching as he disappeared from view. Still, in that dusty room, calmly running his fingers through Harry's fur, the whimpers finally stopping, Sirius repeated the same thing over and over again in hushed tones.

"I've got you, we'll figure this out."

* * *

 **Should I continue?**

A.N: Please be gentle, I'm a bit uneasy to be honest in actually posting this, it's been a very long time since I've posted anything, life and writers block coming into play and well, it's been a bit of a bumpy ride XD, but I wanted to give it a go and well, here it is! I hope you enjoyed it.


	2. Animal

Harriet groaned as she stretched languidly, eyes blearily flickering open, her bones obnoxiously cracking and locking as the noon sun beat hotly down upon her bare back and thighs and… Harriet jolted up, wide awake as she took in her surroundings and the state she was in. The smell was the first thing to hit her like a back kick from a hippogriff to the face. Soft grass, earthy mud buried deep, damp brick, car fumigation, meaty sweat, spicy heat, cold industrialization, stinging pollution. Her nose screwed up as her head violently shook, huffing through her nostrils, trying desperately to dispel the vile combination of smells lodging themselves at home.

Then everything bombarded her. She could hear people… Walking, talking, laughing, hissing, whispering, a drum bass of thump-thump… Thump-thump, an orchestra of humanity that seized and sizzled through her brain despite her being in the back garden of Grimmauld place and far away from the main street and neighbors. Her palms slammed themselves against the shell of her ears, trying to block out the raging inferno trying to bury itself in her mind, nearly deafening out her own thoughts.

The light burned her eyes, made white spots dance in her vision, everything around her just on the wrong shade of bright. The spring breeze was harsh against her skin, goosebumps and prickling dusting her bare skin, the grass beneath her irrationally making her want to roll around in it, to feel the ticklish feathering she was sure she could gain from the experience. But then realization set in… She was naked… And Remus was crouched just across from her, a set of folded clothes lain carefully across one arm, fond smile that knew too much of what she was feeling decorating his face with a hint of melancholy. She couldn't bring herself to feel ashamed of her state of undress, not while being so swept up in her senses.

She went to speak, shout perhaps, how could he hear her over all this noise? When the skin around her mouth, jaw and neck crinkled and cracked. Her hand snapped to her chin, fingers pulling away dribs and flakes of the crusted blood smoothing down her mouth and neck.

"Please tell me I didn't…"

Remus chuckled, and the sound felt like a gong going off in her head. He only smiled wider when she flinched and… Growled. Yes. She growled. He stood up then, playfully throwing the clothes at her, which she caught without thinking. As he began to speak, Harriet began boisterously shucking on the clothing, at one point tearing a whole through the knee of her joggers when she tugged like she normally would have. She must have worn them thin.

"Oh, you didn't. You found an alley cat or two that were brave enough to invade the garden while you were out here and there was no stopping you. It's natural Harry. I'm lucky, my senses are only heightened to this extent two days prior to a new moon, but you seem to still have them switched fully on. It must be because of the type of werewolf your fath-…"

Then, and finally, the memories came flooding back in a hailstorm of feelings, smells and instincts. Her transformation, Sirius and Remus finding her, being scared, alone, confused, Sirius's hug… The energy, the tight gums and padding of paws as she wanted to… She didn't know what she had wanted to do, but Remus must have as he lead her to the back door and let her free to roam the garden. The cats, the chase, the yapping and howling and satisfying crunch of bone and meat as she feasted her victory… Oddly enough, she didn't feel sick at the memories, only more hungry. The horrid sound her stomach had twisted into being only solidifying that fact. Damn, she was starved.

However, she couldn't focus on hunger right now, even if she could smell the tantalising hints of a full English breakfast Sirius was cooking in kitchen, not with the heavy question that hung in the air between her and Remus. Harry's voice was hoarse and broken in places when she spoke.

"Dad-… James isn't my father… Is he?"

He couldn't have been. She may not know a whole lot about werewolves, but she knew the basics thanks to Snape's third year lectures on the creatures. Werewolves were male, always male, the lupine change and genealogy being housed in the y chromosome, not the x, meaning her mother wasn't a carrier even if, in some fantastical land, lily's father had been a werewolf. By Remus's and Sirius's reactions last night, James wasn't a carrier, let alone a full blood. She had never been bit, and even if she had been, because of the lack of a y chromosome, the virus, like all virus's, wanted to be spread or at least passed down through children, and with no chromosome to ensure that, instead of transforming her it would have killed its host off as a lost cause. The only explanation, at least the most likely out of a unlikely bunch, was it had been passed down to her from her father, somehow mutated, perhaps due to her magical abilities, and had restructured one of her x chromosomes… Perhaps both. The melancholy in Remus's eyes bloomed under the late spring suns warmth.

"Biological? Perhaps not… But he loved you."

His jaw locked, tense, tendons pulling taunt as he spoke through his teeth, a hiss of words layered with so much meaning and hurt.

"He loved you a whole damn lot. Never forget that."

The heavy situation was too much for Harry to handle, especially with how hungry, energetic and jittery she was feeling. She needed to run and run and run and… No. Food first. Smiling, even if it didn't reach her eyes, Harriet began to edge towards the back door with Remus in toe.

"Well, what was it the death eaters used to say about me? Ah, yes. A rabid animal on the loose. Who knew they were more right then even they wanted to be?"

Remus gave a hearty chuckle and placed a gently hand on her shoulder as he herded her back inside.

"As a fellow 'rabid animal', I can assure you this life, while it has its many pitfalls, is not too bad. You have me and Sirius. We're family and to us wolves, family takes on a whole different level of meaning."

* * *

 _THREE MONTHS LATER:_

Apparently, being a werewolf, especially a female one who could be the very first and only of her kind, came with a long, long, long list of contingencies and forced actions for so called 'safety'. Until she got her instincts under control, she could no longer see Ron or Hermione or anyone other than Remus and Sirius. She was acting too 'wolfish', in Sirius's words, she sniffed things, growled, hated it when all the lights were on and couldn't stand loud noises, and with a flimsy excuse of a dragon pox infection, people had been kept at bay. Simultaneously, if she wanted to stay out of the MoM's eyesight, both Remus and Sirius were sure that even despite the leaps and bounds the ministry was coming along with in regard to werewolf rights, that they would take her and experiment, she needed to learn discipline. Apart from wanting to disagree with them on the simple fact of wanting to see the best in people, she couldn't. Voldemort may have been gone, his leading death eaters behind bars, but corruption and ideology were a lot harder to kill or lock away and the wizarding world, unfortunately, were still rife with it. So, her self-imposed isolation began.

Then, of course, came the bloody potions and medication. According to Remus, and even Sirius with his heightened sense of smell due to his prolonged use of Animagus while in Azkaban, who was only safe from… Unsavoury reactions due to their strong family bond, she reeked of female werewolf and that was a dangerous thing indeed. Wizards, witches and muggles wouldn't be able to tell, not consciously at least, but other creatures? Hostile werewolves? Werewolves in general? Oh, yeah, one whiff and Remus was adamant she would be hunted and tracked for less than honourable reasons. Remus was the brains of their little hot-pot of a family, and so it was left to him to come up with the brilliant plan to divert this problem when they realized they couldn't stop it all together.

Smell, or strong smell in mammals came from sweat, hormones too were transferred through sweat and it was the combination of her scent and lupine hormones that were giving her away. So, if Harriet was continually dosed up on almost lethal amounts of anti-sweating potion, four doses a day and a whole vile each time, her scent was vastly diminished. Even Remus, and herself, could only smell that distinctly wolf smell with there noses pressed down upon her forearm skin and a big gulp of air huffed into puffing lungs. The only problem with this solution was Harry couldn't sweat anymore, and even if this seemed a pretty good deal, the reality of it? Not so much. As a werewolf now, her body ran a lot hotter than most and sweating was the fundamental way of stabilizing core temperature. In short? She overheated too quickly and too often. Two months after her first shift, she had nearly died from heatstroke alone too many times to be comfortable with. To counteract this, she had to have freezing showers every couple of hours to bring her temperature back down to acceptable levels for herself like some mangy mutt.

That lead to the final problem. Remus and Sirius, despite their best efforts and their well-meaning attitude, weren't cut out for this. She was a werewolf, but not like Remus. He didn't know enough to help guide her through this, and after the first time she had grown so hot that she had had several seizures in a row, he knew they had to find someone who did. In the end, the only one who could help her was the phantom of her unknown father. There were just too many obstacles to contend with without any knowledge of this species of werewolf. Harriet needed to shift more often than Remus, at least three times a week or her body would force her to change even if she fought the transformation tooth and nail. Her senses seemed only to get stronger. Her energy was off the charts and if she wasn't running or doing… Something, Remus was sure she would explode just from that alone. They needed to find the man if they wanted Harriet to live, that was the short and end of it all and it's what lead up to a forlorn Harriet, perched on the foyer steps, watching Sirius as he packed the last of his things to leave, Remus tottering around the place, putting things in his bag that Sirius had either over looked or forgotten.

"You… You know who he is?"

Sirius sighed and ran a hand through his hair at Harriet's question.

"I… May have an Idea."

Harriet scoffed and stood up, propping her hip on the banister as she crossed her arms over her chest, hair glistening in the fading sun from her fourth shower that day. Remus and Sirius didn't know she had heard them the night before, squirrelled away in the farthest library away from her bedroom in hopes of her not hearing. It had worked, partially, but she had still picked up words and jilted sentences every now and again from their hushed midnight quarrel.

"It's this JD fellow isn't it?"

She may not have heard it all, but she was pretty sure she got a gist of the conversation, even if she had not meant to eavesdrop at all, but simply couldn't help it due to the rising volume of the arguing voices. A year before her birth, when there had been no rising war, James, Lily, Remus and Sirius had gone on an American road trip. They had met wizards, witches, most of whom Sirius had slept his way through, creatures and had a fantastic time. Lily had even made friends with someone who Remus and Sirius only called JD. Remus, in the middle of the argument, had hinted that Lily had been more than friendly with this guy, he had smelled the chemical hormones of lust and attraction, but James had only been too happy to go along, for reasons unknown, and brushed Remus's concerns off when he had spoken to his friend.

Sirius had grown angry, started shouting at Remus, believing Lily would have never had done that to James, she had loved James with all her heart and he was a 'shithead' for even thinking it. Remus had counter attacked by saying he was sure James had known about it, maybe even sanctioned the little tryst for reasons perhaps forever lost, and either way, the man had smelled of wolf, wolf like Harry and that was their only lead. Harry had almost wanted to laugh. Their only lead was a man who they had only known for a couple of months, who could be dead, or worse. The argument was ended when Sirius said he remembered where he used to live, and he would pay the place a visit, Remus having to stay with her to keep an eye out and to make sure she stayed safe. Sirius's hands on her shoulders snapped her out of her thoughts, her eyes flashing quickly before settling on his kind smile.

"Maybe, maybe not. But we need… You need help. If there is any sort of route or nook and cranny I need to look into to… Fix things, to make sure you're safe and alive, then your life is worth that and a whole lot more. Whatever happened all those years ago, we need answers. You need answers. Fret not little pup, I'll be back by the weeks end and we'll all laugh over this with a couple of butterbears."

Harriet winced.

"I still don't understand why I can't go with you. My scent is down and-"

This time, it was Remus that cut her off.

"You know why Harry. We only knew him for a couple of months, and that was mainly James and Lily. He's a wolf of some sort, he might have a pack. You're a pup, still shaky from your first transition and out of control, you can't even walk down the main street without nearly turning due to over stimulation… We can't risk putting you in that environment."

Harriet didn't have any time to kick up any sort of fuss, as useless as it would be, before Sirius gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, pecked Remus's lips and with a jaunty smile and a quick 'I'll bring you back as many burgers as I can carry!', he apparated to America.

* * *

 _ONE MONTH LATER_

"Remember to take your potions, you have enough to last you a few months, don't leave the house, have as many runs in the garden as you can and don't invite anyone inside."

When the one-month mark hit without a single word back from Sirius, both Harriet and Remus grew insurmountably worried. Harriet's reaction had been to go over the great pond, track Sirius down and perhaps kill and maim those who were obviously holding him hostage or tracking him or had kille-… No. He was alive. She would have known if he wasn't. Oh god, this was all her fault. If she had never turned, Sirius wouldn't have had to go looking for a strange man in a strange place… Honestly, who calls a house Stone haven? And Remus would now not be having to follow Sirius's footsteps to track him down. Her body began to shake quite violently. She could feel the change slithering up her windpipe and strangling her, contorting her, wringing and zinging and zapping her muscles and bones. She wanted the change, that was the worst of it, she wanted to shed the human skin and hunt and feast and tear into the throats of those who were keeping Sirius away. She could almost feel their blood on her tongue. She refused to admit even the ghost of it tasted delicious.

"Let me come Remus. Please. Let me come and fucking fee- "

Feed on them. That's what she had wanted to say, but Remus's calloused fingers gently lifting her chin froze the words between her teeth. She wanted to rip into something, anything, even the bags at Remus's feet.

"That isn't you Harry. That's the wolf speaking-"

Harriet shook herself free from his grip and stumbled back a step or two, snarling and quaking and salvating. It was happening, she couldn't stop it, she could never stop it. She wasn't sure she really did want to stop it. As close as she and Remus were, now more than ever after her change, he would never fully and truly understand. And that hurt. Remus feared the shift, loathed it, despised it with such a bottomless pit of hatred. Harriet thirsted for it, lived for it, wanted to smother herself in it. If the option was there, she didn't think she would ever change back to being human, as dark as that thought was. That was the fundamental difference between her and Remus. Remus hated his wolf… Harriet was beginning to hate her humanity. Being a wolf was easy, black and white monochrome… Being human? Complexity didn't even begin to cover it.

"No… No you don't fucking see! The wolf and me, there is no segregation! Not like it is with you! The wolf is me and I am the fucking wolf and those bastards, whoever they are have taken one of my pack mates and they will bleed and scream for even thinking they could-"

The shift twisted in her sternum as Harriet howled and bent over under the strain, hands nearly going up to her chest to rip at the skin there, to hopefully set the wolf free but Remus, brilliant and forever calm Remus, snatched her hands, swept her legs out from underneath her, fell to his knees and brought her tightly to his chest in a huddled ball of rippling skin and straining muscle, rocking her back and forth.

"Fight it Harry. Fight it off. You control the change, the change doesn't control you."

She could only snarl and bark as she fought to get free from his restricting limbs.

"They need to pay. They need to learn. They're going to take you like they've taken Sirius and… I'll be alone… No… They.. Die. Only answer…"

Remus must have picked up on something she had been overlooking as he let out a sad little chuckle, all dead weeds and bone ash.

"We are pack. Me, you, Sirius. We're pack. Distance and time does not change that. We were as much family as we will be when Sirius comes home. Pack is one and no one, ever, in a pack is alone. You. Are. Never. Alone. Not anymore. Now control it, push it down and hold it in."

She only realised she was picturing that vile, horrid cupboard where aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon used to lock her into when she 'misbehaved', by Remus's words shattering that haunting memory. Alone. She wasn't alone any more. No more beatings. No more scraps of food from the bin. No more damp cupboard. No more war. No more running and hiding…

And yet, she was still running and hiding. She was running from her memories, hiding from what she is, what she's always been and has now only come to light. Remus and Sirius, she loved them, so dearly, so sincerely, so intrinsically that it almost burned and scorched her. But they didn't understand, they couldn't. She didn't want to run anymore, she wanted to fight. She didn't want to hide, she wanted to come out of the shadows but because they loved her as deeply as she loved them, they wanted her encased in shade, shadowed away, hidden for safety. The sound of bone cracking and the squelch of muscle tearing was the only warning given to Remus to jump away as Harry fully shifted. The whimpering she made nearly concaved his heart.

"Oh harry… I'll… We'll be back. I promise. Just… Just stay here and be safe. Teddy's with Andromeda and when I bring Sirius back, we'll all… You'll see, it'll all be alright. Trust me one more time and stay here."

He hugged her trembling furry form one last time before he too left. When the air settled, the couch was the first to fall victim to Harriet's wrath of claws and fangs.

However, everything wasn't alright. Remus didn't come back. Sirius didn't come back. When Harriet's tatty puppy calendar, a gag gift from Sirius, showed it had turned another full month since Remus's departure, that trust he asked of her was broken. She was done with hiding. She was done with running. She had a pack, a pack that had gone missing and she damn well refused to sit around and wait like a Labrador wagging her little fluffy tail.

The hunt was on and Harriet was positively salivating.

* * *

 **A.N IMPORTANT:** I know it's been a long time since updating, and for that I really am sorry. But I sure do hope this chapter makes up for it! And fear not, I really should be updating this more often (A lot more often) now as I have the basics of the entire plot mapped out. Nothing concret, but I know where point A and B are now, so that's always a plus… XD

However, I do have a few questions I want to ask you beautiful readers and I really do treasure your input. So, here goes!

 **Should Elena be included in this fic? If so, in what capacity and role would you like to see her play?**

 **Next chapter is going to be from one of the Stone Haven pack's P.O.V, so who would you like to see?**

 **Which one would you like more, Harry hunting the pack down and her meeting them that way, or the pack running into Harry who is trying to track Sirius and Remus?**

 **In regard to the previous question, do you want it to be the pack or an individual that Harry meets? And if it is an individual, which Character from the Bitten verse would you like Harry to meet first?**

There we go! If you could answer the question in either a P.M, review or even by pigeon, I would be ever so grateful.

Now just some announcements on what I have changed in cannon. As I have said about this fic being a mix of both books and T.V show/film, I just want to make clear that the way Jeremy looks in this fic will be taken out of the books and not the T.V show. In the books, Jeremy is described as having black hair and black eyes that have an Asian slant, he is 6'2 and has a lean build with high cheekbones. This fits in with Harry's appearance, and will play a big factor in the upcoming chapters. So, if you have only watched the T.V show and are wondering why I am describing Jeremy like this in the next chapter, this is why. I also left a little hint in this chapter about Harry being a lot more than a simple witch/werewolf hybrid. In the books, it's explained as Jeremy being a hybrid too, a kogitsune werewolf one, and he can sense when those closest to him are in danger and can even see visions of where they are and what's happening. While Harry can't see visions and recognize them as such yet (Although I will give a little bit more of a hint; Harry's visions of Arthur Weasley's attack and Sirius's weren't implanted by Voldemort), her knowing that Sirius isn't dead simply because she would have 'felt' it, yet again, plays a major role in the on coming fic.

 _If you guys have any questions about this fic at all, don't hesitate to ask!_ And I will address them in the author's note next chapter (If they aren't spoilers).

I hope you enjoyed this chapter and are looking forward to the next! If you can spare a minute or two, drop a review in that little box down there, they warm this little authors heart right up!


	3. Born

**Nick's P.O.V**

The crunching sound of disturbed gravel echoed down the narrow labyrinth of back alleyways, only broken by the scrape of a large timberland boot and the muted breath of its owner. Nicholas Sorrentino, Nick for short, had spent the evening knocking back beers and watching a two-bit football game in bear valley's local watering hole with his father, Antonio. After the game had drifted to a close, the bar beginning to herd its patrons out, Antonio had slipped into his car to drive back to Stone Haven, Nick choosing to take the time to find a out-of-the-way hidey-hole in which he could shift and run home. In werewolf terms, he was still a young 'un, barely out of his teenage years with energy to spare. Any chance he got to burn that energy off? You can damn well rest assured knowing he would take it.

Things, especially with the pack, had become… Stagnant lately. Yes, stagnant was a good word. No trouble, no mutts, no fights. Don't take him the wrong way, he didn't wish for disaster to hit the pack, nor did he want anyone hurt, but the tranquility of it all was beginning to send him insane. Perhaps he had always had a bit of a screw loose, god knows he had sent his father bald long before he should have started loosing his hair. He was a wolf, they were all wolves, and everyone knows wolves don't do too well in stasis. That's it, he knew what it felt like now. It was like they were in the eye of a invisible storm, minutes, seconds, maybe hours away from it dropping lightening, thunder and hailstorm upon their heads in a wind of fury and fire… The scary thing was it felt like they could do nothing to stop this storm from coming and tearing them apart brick by brick, only wait patiently with their heckles raised. And yes, he wasn't only just speaking for himself now, and knowing the pack as deeply as he had, having been born and raised amongst it, he felt he had a mediocum right to speak on their behalf. You didn't have to know the rest of the pack too well to see they were becoming edgy at this new found peace too.

Antonio, his father, a state known business man with a no nonsense sort of attitude and a penchant for cooking, began to space out. Nick caught him once or twice, eyes adrift and frown puckering between his brows, staring into the wall or window as if it could give him all the answers he could ever want or need. Logan, the always level headed and calm psychologist was beginning to snap at everyone and anything that moved within his immediate vicinity. Sharp retorts and one word answers were the only thing pulled from between his pressed lips this week. Elena… Well, Nick didn't rightly know how she was feeling or reacting, having packed up and moved to Toronto, trying to live a 'normal' human life with her equally dull and human fiancé, but he would bet his prized Versace jacket that she was feeling this heavy static in the air too. Clayton, the local psychopathic tank who growled more than spoke, was beginning to take more and more time off from work, being a published anthropology professor of all things condsidering his personality, practically gluing himself to Jeremy's side, barely leaving the man alone even when it came to sleeping. To be honest, Nick wouldn't be surprised if he found out his closest friend was camping outside the Alpha's door at night.

Then came Jeremy and he… He was the worst of them. Jeremy had no full time job, being Alpha was hard enough, especially with people like Nick and Clay within his pack, but he did paint. He was a calm man, lulling voice and all the right words for all the right moments. It was only yesterday that Nick had walked passed his studio and saw him tearing through his canvas's, teeth snarled and eyes squinted. Nick hadn't meant to eavesdrop, he really hadn't, but he had all the same. Antonio had walked past the other door to the studio, stopped and simply said, 'you've seen them again'. The sound of cracking wood and the screech of tearing cotton didn't stop, even as Jeremy replied. 'They're hurt… But I can't see their face… I can never see their face. The visions are coming a lot more lately, clearer too, but I can never see their face." Feeling like he had been intruding on a very private moment he had no right in being witness too, Nick had scurried away and tried to push the conversation he had overheard to the back of his mind. Since then, Jeremy had practically barricaded himself within his main office, slinking back whiskey… The man didn't drink.

Something was coming. Something was taking place. Something big.

Nick shook his head, for once in his life, dread at going home niggling at the edges of his stomach, like his blood was filled with leeches. Turning the final corner to a little encove he normally used for shifting, less broken glass and rotten garbage littered around to foul and slice at him, he slipped in and began raising his shirt, a gust of autumn breeze, mild with a hint of winter hidden in its depths fluttering passed him, chilling his skin. That's when the smell came and that little rustling he had thought to be fluttering bin bags made sense. Poignant, tangy copper. Rusted. Blood. And a lot of it. The sound of growling, low in the sternum, almost bellying, muted, not close but close enough to give a hint on being tracked. No… Not just one growl, multiple growls… A fight… A werewolf fight. Nick slid his shirt back on, felt his ears twitch and his nostrils flare as he came out of the dead end and stuck to the shadows, cautiously making his way to the growing sound, keeping to the shadows to prolong his investigation. This was pack territory, the North American pack, all of America's mutts new about them, feared them mostly, thanks to Clay's endeavours and behaviour. If some mutts were brazen enough to pick a fight on their turf, then they were brave enough to do other suicidal shit. No, this sort of behaviour couldn't pass. They new the rules as much as he did. If they were stupid enough to break those rules, so close too humans too, they were smart enough to die for them.

When he got to the destination of the originating sound and smell, he couldn't stop the silent snarl that slipped onto his face, shadowing his eyes. Trust mutts to pick an unfair fight, though, by the looks of it, the defendant was doing well… Too well. There were already three dead mutt carcasses littered around the alleyway, one paw here, one hind flank flopped into the corner of the dumpster, a shit ton of blood splattering the walls in a deranged art piece. The lone wolf, who had been attacked by four others, wasn't going to last much longer, not with the sixteen inch lead pipe skewered through it's side or the savage bite and tear marks on its right shoulder. The wolf was snarling, lines of bloodied dribble dripping from his chin, teeth coated red. It was an odd colour for a wolf, all dark black smoke, dense and rich… Almost blue under the silver moon above their heads. He had never seen a black wolf before, well, if you didn't count his alpha Jeremy of course, and he noticed the two had the exact same hue of frozen blue to their fur when the moon light hit it just right…

The mottled wolf, all dull browns and grey, leapt prematurely, and Nick knew the other wolves actions before it could even begin to do them. It lept too, lower, maw open and then clamping tight on the throat as it fell back down to earth and took the other wolf with it, shaking its head violently as they crashed to the gravel, tearing its teeth in deeper until Nick was pretty sure he heard the crunch of spinal cord, and even then, the black wolf kept going until he had nearly decapitated the other wolf. After a few second of enjoying its victory, with a almost Alpha-esque growl to ring it out, the black wolf pulled back, stumbled and awkwardly fell to the floor, whimpers replace the growl as the pipe still lodged in its side dug in deeper.

The poor thing wouldn't last long, not with the way it was bleeding. Squaring his shoulders, jaw tense, Nick stepped out of the shadows, the eyes of the black wolf snapping to him immediately as it began to try and stand, or run, or maybe fight him off with the fire lurking in its eyes. For one precious moment, Nick faltered. If the wolfs colouring was odd, his eye colour was as rare as a werewolf walking into a pet store and not causing a riot. Green, bright, on fire and glowing sat nestled into black fur. Damn, those eyes could put any emerald or gem to humiliation. If Nick was the sort to use that type of language, he would almost call the wolf an ethereal beauty. Shame the wolf had to die for fighting on his packs territory. As Nick made his way to the scuttling wolf who could barely move anymore, he caught a hint of something in the wind, barely there, soft, yet a little familiar but not quite. Like meeting a brother you had never met before, who you didn't know was your brother, but the face was just too close to someone you knew. He wanted… Needed to track that scent down, his brain was screaming for him to do so, but first he would have to get rid of the mutt. Finally reaching the wolf, he bent and rested on his heels, stiff hand going for its neck where his fingers grazed the shoulder wound. The wolf snapped at it, quicker than most, leaving Nick barely enough time to snap his own hand back lest he want to lose all his fingers.

The wolf tried once more to back away, but its limbs no longer held enough strength and only managed to unsettle the gravel beneath their jerky movements. Nick knew, somehow, that the whimpers that came from the wolf next was subconscious. Nicks heart twinged and tangled itself at the sight of the weak, battle torn wolf with the melody of hurt ringing in his ears. Up this close, he could tell it was a pup, just a little pup, no older than nineteen in human years, barely a child in werewolf terms. He was likely an orphan, left to defend himself on the streets from other mutts, his father killed, well, possibly by Nicks own pack. But, it was a mutt, it should know the rules and even if he didn't, it was Nicks job to enforce them. Once more he reaches for its neck, planning to make it quick, just one little snap and it would all be over, perhaps death being a blessing, Nick knew he would take death over being a mutt any day, when his hand lifted and the bloods scent grew stronger, the faint smell hiding in the wind, it's secrecy hiding within those very red blood cells coating his palm. Frowning, he brings his hand to his nose, inhales deeply… Then stops breathing all together.

Female. He… She… The wolf… It was irrevocably female. Nick couldn't help his actions, it was too unbelievable not to cast a quick, almost shameful glance to a few inches below the wolfs stomach, between the legs the wolf was still using to fruitlessly try and heave its labouring body away from him, where, if the scent was lying and this really was a he, the evidence would be irrefutable. There was none, it was definitely a female… Shit. Then, as if this realisation wasn't enough for Nicks little brain to comprehend, he was hit with another two, as if they had come along and boxed his ears like his father used to when he had been extremely 'mischievious'. One; the wolf didn't have a scent. Nothing, nada, zilch. If he wasn't staring straight at it, he would think there was no other wolf alive but him in this alleyway. The only scent coming from it was that of its blood, it's DNA, but had the wolf not been injured, it could have very well been a fucking ghost. Somehow, some way, this pup, this small, grievously injured female pup had learnt, and was, hiding her scent.

Two; by the glint in its eye, the smell of it's blood, the richness and potency, and the length of its teeth, this was a born female wolf, unlike Elena who had been bitten and thus, the smell of Elena's wolf taking on a hint of infection rather than purity. You could just… Tell the ones that had been born just by the look of them, even if you discredited the difference in smells. As if she was done with trying to get away, or thought she could get one last shot in before she kicked the bucket, the female wolf tried to bite him once more, jaws bashing together slobberly, blood, her own blood at that, splashing out. Shit. Internal bleeding. She, however, seemed to have pushed her luck past its limit as those brilliant, flashing eyes began to roll to the back of its skull and her straining body fell limp, a muted thud ringing out as her head crashed to the floor. Nick wasted no more time, neither she or he could afford his lack of action due to disbelief any longer, and reached a long fingered hand into his jeans pocket, snatching out his phone.

Simultainiously pressing the speed dial four on his phone and beginning to gently hoist the slumbering wolf into the supposed safety in the crux of his arms, weary of the pole still lancing her mid section, pressing her tightly to his chest, feeling how oddly hot she was, even compared to his higher-than-human body temperature, he balanced the ringing phone to his ear by his shoulder and began stumbling out of the alleyway as daringly fast as he could, trying to keep the wolf as still as possible. Thankfully, he only had to wait four rings before the other side picked up. Antonio's gruff and slightly angry, a rarity, voice wobbled over the line.

"What the hell do you want now? I've just left you and I'm driving."

Nick winced sharply as he took a corner too fast, almost knocking the female wolfs head clean off. Jovial, antagonistic and permanently preppy Nicks tone was, for once, anything but. He could almost see and hear the grin his father was likely sporting slip straight off his face and shatter at his feet.

"Good, get the fuck back here. Ring Logan on the way, there needs to be a clean up in the alleys behind Bobby Fells bar, near the barbers. Four dead mutts, torn to pieces."

The heavy sigh came then, slightly dissapointed but a whole lot expectant. No doubt his father thought he had simply let loose, not a problem when it involved mutts, but if only Antonio knew, truly knew what was going on, what Nick had in his arms… Perhaps he'd have a brain anaurism.

"Five fucking minutes Nicky, I leave you five fucking minutes and you go on a killing spree. Can I not leave you off your collar just once? I oughtta-"

Nick's patience snapped like the mottle wolfs neck had as the heavy beat against his chest began to stutter and grow weak. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! She was bleeding out and her heart was beginning to strain and faulter from lack of blood to pump around the body. They. Didn't. Have. Time. For. This!

"There's no time for your bitching old man! I didn't kill them, a other wolf did! It's dying… It's… Shit a brick, I don't believe it myself and I have it bleeding out in my arms…"

Before he could spiral down the mental drain like a soggy cheerio from a washed up breakfast bowl, Antonio snapped him back as quick and as steadily as one would with an elastic band. He was good at that, his father, always there to bring him hurtling back from the edge of self destruction Nick was all too fond of trying to throw himself over.

"Son, you're not making any sort of sense. Why the hell are you carrying a dying mutt around like a handbag?"

Nick tried to find gentle words, something to ease the oncoming blow, a respit that Nick had not had the prevelige of having, he really did… Instead, he blurted everything he had found, everything he new so far, right out into the night air.

"It's female. Born… I'm holding a _born female werewolf_ …"

All was silent for three torturing heart beats, two of which the female wolf's heart had skipped.

"I'm on my way, I'll call Logan and you call Jeremy, give him a heads up… If he'll fucking believe us that is and not think we've drank spiked beers all night. Now quit your blabbering and get a fucking move on."

* * *

 **Who's P.O.V do you want to see next?**

* * *

A.N: I am aiming to update at least once a week, (AT LEAST) but when my degree is going easier, I'll be updating more and when exam season hits, I might be a little late on updating but if i am going to be late, I'm going to start leaving notes on my home page.

However, as I have a few weeks break, I'm going to aim to push out two chapters a week, Mondays and Thursdays. Hence why this chapter is out! :). However, if I can only update on one day that particular week, it'll be on the Thursday.

 **As always, please drop a review!** They let me know there's interest in my little mindless works and keeps me pushing out chapters. :)

On that note, thank you all for your input, reviews, follows and favourites! They're what keeps me coming back to this and working on it, and I really do hope you are enjoying the road so far.


	4. Claws

**Clayton's P.O.V**

It had been quiet, too quiet that night, and that alone should have tipped Clay off that whatever was in the air, humming and buzzing, had come to a clandestine boiling point. For some reason, perhaps subconsciously knowing today was the day when the hammer would fall, both Clay and Jeremy had converged into his study and practically locked themselves within, waiting without knowing they were waiting. That was the frustrating part, the not knowing.

Jeremy had spent most of the late evening staring into the fire, fingers stippled and knuckles white, the only visible signs of tension in his otherwise lax form. Clay had been tapping away on his laptop, trying fruitlessly to make a dent into the first-year assignments he was grading, mind off and on Jeremy like a child was in his brain, flicking a switch whenever the fancy took them and their sticky fingers. Then Jeremy's phone had rang, it was Nick and even from his distance, Clay overheard the exchange, words clear and sound and yet utterly confusing. _Mutt fight, clean up, mess, send Logan,_ they all made sense. However, _bringing back the mutt, severely injured, bleeding out and born Female…_ Well, you can understand Clayton Danvers confusion and cynicism. Nick had, after all, been out drinking the daylight away with his father, and in his own knowledge, he had a pivotal role in creating the only known female werewolf and he doubted Nick had the balls to call Elena a mutt.

Nonetheless, Jeremy was all too ready to accept the hazy facts, told Nick and Antonio to put the gas in their car to good work, hung up and began cleaning off a large table in the study for a makeshift hospital gurney. Clay only wanted to punch something, but no matter what he said, what he tried to make Jeremy see, he was only being rebutted with a 'we'll see' or a simple nod. This could very well be a trap, an in to Stone Haven and therefore the pack, a route to attack Jeremy. Even if it wasn't a trick, a slight of hand or something more sinister, if this was in fact a female wolf… What did it matter? It was a mutt and mutts had no place on or in pack territory. Female or not, it had broken the rules, the very same rules Clayton enforced with sometimes extreme measures. However, it was to keep the pack safe and to Clayton, that was all that mattered. But he had no more time for arguments when the front doors slammed open with an almighty bang, letting in the chilled night air in a gust of unforgiving wind.

Even before Nick came gambling in, blood soaking the front of his baby blue shirt and jeans, he could smell the rusted copper so strongly he huffed a little to try and dislodge the smell. Perhaps he had been a little hasty, it was definitely female. He saw from the corner of his eye as Jeremy stiffened, something deep and sorrowful edging his frame in harsh lines and sloping shadows. Clay himself had to take a moment to breath, collect himself, likely his experience of being around Elena helping him handle the smell. But that did not stop this whole thing from being a ploy. It wouldn't be the first time a mutt had used its head rather than its brawn to try and kill off the pack, and yet they all met the same end at Clayton's claws.

"Nick, go to the basement and get the hospital kit."

Nick left the room as quickly as he had entered it at Jeremy's order, for that was what it was, no room for argument or hassle, just do. It had been years since Clay had heard that tone and it was only as he glimpsed Antonio skidding into the room that he understood why it had appeared. Huddled in Antonio's arms was a jet-black wolf, rusted pipe skewing its lower stomach, big for its age but still irrevocably young. The fur around its shoulder was matted, glinting red under the lamp light, no doubt hiding a nasty wound there too.

Antonio strode over, and as he placed it on the cold table ready for Jeremy to get to work, it woke up. For being as injured as it was, it gave a good fight, ending in Antonio pinning its back legs down and Clay pinning its neck to the table, to stop the gnashing of teeth from meeting flesh, they caught gazes for the first time and it clicked, locked and bolted. He knew that look, that shadow and keen glint as sharp as a knifes edge. It was the shine of an animal that had bled and starved and been bruised, beaten and throttled, only to come out the other side still swinging. It was the mark of a survivor. Jeremy had the same look, Clay and Elena too. The weary hint that showed the other person had seen too much, done too much, lived through too much. A solider. A veteran. Perhaps she saw herself mirrored back too, as her jaw stopped its snarling and clamping. For one long moment, perhaps for infinity, Clay wondered exactly what it was she saw reflected back at her. Her mistakes or her victories? Her ghosts or life?

"Hold her tight."

Jeremy's voice severed the momentary connection as Nick came back into the room, crowding the table and opening the large box of tools and equipment. Then Jeremy was in the middle of them, holding her stomach flat, large hand wrapping around the pipe… Yanking it free from its fleshy prison. No one had been ready for the painful howl and rageful jerk and bite as the wolf convulsed on the table. With the amount she was moving, she would bleed out fully in minutes, and with the shake and twisting form of the body, Jeremy would have no chance to get in and sew the wound closed.

Clay didn't know why he did what he did next, only that he thought there was no alternative. Clay may have been against this whole thing, but Jeremy wasn't, and he was alpha… More than Alpha, he had been Clay's only family for such a long time, his father in all but blood, and if he wanted something done, even if Clay fundamentally disagreed with it, Clay would help him. And so, not really thinking all too much, Clay lent in close to the writhing head, close enough to feel its breath tickle the sensitive flesh, tilted his own head to the side and bared his neck. The wolf was in too much pain to understand human words, but the signal was there. They were only trying to help it, not injure it further or kill it, and if it really wanted free, well, it had his jugular right there for the taking.

The wolf stilled. Sniffed. Jerked as if to bite him and when he did not flinch, it flopped to the table. He pulled away, felt the heat of three sets of eyes, but could only look down at the face of the wolf as its eyes screwed tight, huffing for breath through flared nostrils.

"I'd get to work before she bleeds out."

Clay gruffly bit out, finally moving his hand from the wolfs neck, sure it would no longer fight. Antonio pulled back too, leaving Jeremy to his arduous job against time.

"Why the fuck did you do that? It could have bitten your head clean off! She tried to take my hand back in the alley way I found her in. You know how mutts are!"

Clay didn't bother to glance at Nick, not particularly liking his tone. Instead, he watched the wolf, watched it struggle to keep still, watched its laboured breathing, watched it's fight for life.

"It's not a mutt."

And it wasn't… _She_ wasn't. A mutt would have torn through his neck like a birthday present. A mutt wouldn't have that look in its eye, the look you only gained from regret and guilt and self-hatred. Mutts never felt any of those things. Perhaps he had super imposed himself upon her, perhaps Jeremy and Elena too, but if she was a mutt, then they were one as well. Perhaps it was all in his head, but by the way Jeremy cast a quick glance at him from over his shoulder, sharp and quick, Clay knew it wasn't. Jeremy had seen what he had. Nick said no more, only puffed and slunk off to a chair and soon enough, or perhaps hours later, they were all sitting down, Jeremy finally pulling away from the wolf who had fallen into torturous slumber half way through the procedure.

"Tony, can you go run an ice bath. She isn't transforming back, even in sleep, and she's burning up. I can't see why, no infection should have set in so quickly and she was already extremely hot when she arrived."

Antonio downed the last drop of whiskey he had poured himself during the wait and stood from his chair, placing the tumbler back onto the side table.

"On it."

There were so many questions that needed answering, but the only one willing to voice them seemed to be Nick.

"Now that you've said it, she was pretty hot to the touch back in the alley way. You think she's diseased? That why she's not transforming back?"

For some inexplicable reason, just as Jeremy went to heave the sleeping wolf into his arms, Clay beat him to it, crooking her head into his elbow and keeping clear from the newly stitched shoulder and stomach. Even more strangely, Jeremy didn't give him a single curious look or comment, only removing his attention from the wolf long enough to answer Nick as they made their way to the bathroom.

"No, she smells healthy. If disease was the answer, that does not explain why she would not transform back. The shock and the pain should have been enough to force the change upon her… Unless, of course, this is not the worst she's been through and she's gained a… Tolerance…"

Clayton knew Jeremy, knew him as much as he knew himself, and so, it didn't take much to understand and hear the pain the word tolerance brought him. However, for once, Clay couldn't understand the why. Why the thought hurt Jeremy. Why the word singed him too. Why they were doing this in the first place. Why he was fucking carrying the strange wolf to the bath tub of all places and not the dumpster where it belonged. And why of all why's he was trying to reassure not only Jeremy with what he said next, but also himself.

"She's a survivor, she'll heal."

They made it to the bathroom, the tub almost to the brim with cold water, overflowing slightly as Clay slid the wolf in, her eyes flickering open for the briefest of moments. The wolfs head lolled on the side, propping itself up as Clay pulled back. Once again, it was up to Nick to break the silence as Clay pulled back further and joined rank with the other three.

"She's… She's born. I mean, I'm not the only one who could smell and see it… Was I?"

Jeremy shook his head.

"No. No you weren't."

Antonio lent a hip against the door frame, pulling a piece of material out from his back pocket, handing it to Jeremy.

"Forgot I found this, she had it in her mouth and refused to let go of it. Looks like a piece from an old tweed jacket to me, but she was feisty over it. Thought it might help."

It was a part of a blazer collar, crumpled and covered in saliva. Jeremy frowned before bringing it up to his nose, sniffing, eyes growing wide as he took a deeper breath before pulling it away, one word falling from his lips like a broken prayer.

"Remus?"

The wolf's head sprang up, eyes wide and hot and heavy before it slid into the water, overflowing the tub. The sound of bones cracking, skin flaking, and pealing danced through the air, and just as a hand, human, delicately female, long fingered and pale reached and clasped the edge of the over flowing tub of ice water, the lights sizzled, flickered and then went bang, raining glass down upon their heads. Darkness. It was only due to his sharp senses that he heard a body, tall, slither from the tub, a rustle of a towel, the flutter of a shower curtain and then pain in his right shoulder, just shy of his neck, and a foreign weight on his back. The female wolf had turned back, somehow highjacked the lighting and jumped him from the bathtub, tearing into his shoulder with blunt human teeth.

Clay careened backwards, slamming the body behind him into the wall. The teeth unclamped from his shoulder, a vicious snarl ringing out, bellowing past his ear and just as he pulled away to slam the body once more, something warm and thick trickling from his shoulder, the weight was gone with the muted thud of padding, wet feet on tile. The door of the bathroom slammed shut before anyone could grasp the ink silhouette that darted through the crack.

"Shit, she bit me."

Clay barked out as he prodded at the wound on his neck, wide and gnarly, impressive for being inflicted when in human form. The lights from outside the bathroom flickered back to life just as Jeremy reached the door, ripping the handle clean off before he powered through the doorway, the clang of brass bouncing off ceramic tile making Nick wince. Clay and Nick weren't far behind him, finding the man stalled at the corner of the twisting hallway, fingers scraping against the wall. It was only as Nick and Clay flanked the alpha that he saw what had caught his attention. A handprint, bloody and smeared, burning hot and bright against the white wallpaper. Jeremy's spine stiffened as he spoke, never fully turning to face them, gaze still trained on the hand print.

"Nick, run perimeter, keep to the doors. I doubt she's out the house quite yet, but keep guard in case she slips through mine and Clays fingers. If she aims a long stick at you… Run."

Nick was good at following orders and dashed away down the hall to do what he was told. However, Jeremy never moved but Clay found his tongue wagging, lips doing what neither of the remaining men were.

"A long stick? You know who she is?"

Jeremy, in an act Clay could not define, gently laid his own hand over the print on the wall, watching as the flesh dwarfed the bloodstain until it was hidden, palm to palm, finger to finger.

"I think I've known all along… The visions, the smell… The dreams of Lily-… I should have… I should have known… I should have been there…"

A clang from the front parlour shattered Jeremy's words even further than they already had been and Clayton had no time or patience to try and piece the puzzle together, not as he dashed down the hallway and descended the stairs three at a time, Jeremy hot on his heels, Nick re-joining them in the entrance way to Stone Haven. What greeted the trio in the parlour had been the last thing Clay had expected. No weaponry, no upturned furniture, no snarling wolf ready for one last ditch fight.

She stood in front of the lit hearth, back to it and face to them. A towel was hazardly thrown around her body, slightly too small for her six-foot frame. The towel was drenched red, blood, from waist down, directly over her right side, where her wound would be, the blood cascading down her right leg, mapping rivers and fault lines on her pale skin, dripping onto the floor with a puthip, puthip, puthip. One hand was pressing into her side, where the puncture would be, scrunching and white knuckled, simultaneously keeping the towel in place.

She was pale, too pale from blood loss, shaking, trembling violently, heaving breaths quaking through her broad shoulders and lean limbs. She was thin, wirey, but well-muscled… And heavily scared. Her hair was soaked, like the rest of her, a slight curl still holding despite the heavy mass pressing it close to her scalp, shoulders and chest in inky tendrils that shone a little blue. A hint of blue Clay had seen before, a connection Clay made as soon as his gaze travelled and locked onto her face.

The eyes were foreign, new, almost alien in their brilliance. Green, bright and alive and ever so fiery blazing fiercely between jet black arching brows. However, the rest Clay felt a familiarity for, hinted features he had seen every day of his life. Clay knew the sharp sweeping cheekbones. He knew the proud chin and slicing jawline, a little less harsh in its female form, but similar all the same. He knew the slight upturn of the small nose, knew someone else who would scrunch it when faced with an undesirable decision he was forced to make or faced with a situation that made no sense. He thought she might do the same, as she already was. He may not know the scar that slashed down her forehead like a lightning bolt, piercing through one eyebrow and touching down upon eyelid, but he damn well knew the widows peak, knew the angry scrunching of the brows, knew the almost heart shaped face, knew the full cupid's bowless lips and slight Asian turn to the eyes.

He knew them because he knew Jeremy.

The shatter of glass broke the heavy air once more as her free hand clenched around the photo frame she had plucked from its home above the fire, fingers curled and bleeding and clawing at the frame as her shaking arm accusatorily jutted it out towards them… Towards Jeremy, the two having locked gazes in a heavy battle. When she spoke, her voice was deeper than Clay expected, all smoke and spices with a heavy English accent adding colour to the edges.

"Why do you have a picture of my mother?"

* * *

 **Who's P.O.V do you want to see next?**

Thank you all to those who reviewed followed and favourited! I hope this makes up for the little bit of a wait I put you through and if you can, please drop another review, they feed the plot bunny for this fic!

* * *

 **QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS;**

 **Will there be Elena bashing?**

I don't quite understand where this worry has come from because Elena, so far, has only been mentioned in a single sentence, which was: 'Elena... Well, Nick didn't rightly know how she was feeling or reacting, having packed up and moved to Toronto, trying to live a 'normal' life with her equally dull and human fiancé..."

Firstly, this is from Nicks P.O.V, a man who was born and had grown up in the pack with pack life, of course his going to find Elena's actions strange and perhaps even a little bit hurtful as she left him behind too. But the thing to take away here is it's Nicks P.O.V. If told from Elena's P.O.V, it would be a completely different scope and emotional spectrum.

Secondly, fear not, there will be no Elena bashing. I love Elena, especially as a rare breed of strong female protagonist. However, she isn't perfect, no one in this story is (including Harry) and she's going to have her moments where she has friction with others, just like everyone else. Don't expect anyone in this fic to be a perfect angel, after all, where would all the drama come from?

 **Thirdly and most importantly** there will be no battle over Clay XD. Actually, Harry's and Elena's relationship will have hardly anything to do with him. I hate fics where two women turn on each other because of a man and I refuse to do that to Elena or Harry, so if that's what you're after, please drop this fic nowXD.

 **Where is Sirius, Remus and Teddy?**

I can't say where or what's happened to Sirius or Remus as that is a huge, huge part of the plot, so spoilers, but don't worry, the answers do come. As for Teddy, I'm pretty sure I mentioned it but he's with Andromeda, as Sirius, Remus or Harry are hardly going to take a small toddler to an unknown pack, especially when one after the other keeps disappearing. He will make appearances later though.

 _ **Once again, thank you all so much and I really do hope you are liking the story so far!**_


	5. Danger

**_Jeremy's P.O.V._**

Jeremy Danvers sighed laboriously as he bent over in his chair that was pushed up close to the bed, brushing away a rogue curl of ebony from the slightly frowning forehead of the only other inhabitant of the room. The curl tangled around his forefinger, coiling like a viper, refusing to let go, and he found himself rubbing it, mind lost far away and years ago as he sat at the girls bedside. She had been unconscious for three days now, four come nightfall, and given the increase of colour to her pallor, she should be waking up soon. After stubbornly presenting him with that old photo frame, dripping blood and half broken, she had wavered, eyes rolling as the blood loss finally caught up to her. After a heartbeat, she had dropped like a puppet with their strings cut, Jeremy had hardly enough time to grab her falling form before she crashed to the cherrywood floorboards.

He had not spoken much to his pack, not then and not now, instead choosing to silently stitch her back up before carrying her up the stairs to a spare bedroom, privately changing her into some of his old clothes before gently tucking her into the king sized bed the room housed. What could he say to them? This is my daughter? My werewolf daughter who, no, I do not know the name of? By the look Clayton had shot him before he had vanished them both upstairs, after spotting her human face, he already had his inklings all lined up and ready to be fired. Antonio would not be far behind him and then, soon, the rest of the pack would fall into place. For once, words had failed him and he found he could not speak even to his closest of friends.

If Jeremy held any doubt, any whatsoever, about this girls parentage, it had died on the second night of his diligent vigil over her bedside. Whatever she had done, used, ate to dampen the secretion of her natural scent had broken, along with her fever, and Jeremy had gained his first full snuffle of the smell. He was hit with memories almost instantaneously. She had Lily's tones of sweet pea and what could only be described as sunbeams, if such things could have a smell. However, those tones were mixed with his own notes, just as prominent, poignant spring rain and heady earl grey. Yet, mixed and hidden between the song of what smelled like him and lily was something wholly unique. The spice of fire, hot and burning, the zap of what he pictured lightning to smell like, fast and sharp with a soft base of succulent pairs. Still, the end result was the same. There was no doubt this was the offspring of himself and his dear Lily. _Their daughter._

Nonetheless, there may have been no doubt, but the hole doubt had left had been quickly filled by an endless line of questions that plagued and tortured his already frazzled mind. He had met Lily, James, Sirius and Remus when he was younger, not young, but younger. A new adult playing at being old and wise. When his brutal father, Malcolm, had still been a part of his pack, Remus's own father had searched them out, trying to find a willing werewolf to show his son the ropes of their way of life. Malcolm, well, having found out about this more animalistic, savage and bloodthirsty breed of werewolf, he had been all to happy to agree to fill that role for the boy, with the idea of morphing said boy into a mindless but loyal weapon for the pack to use.

Only, that plan had been well and truly foiled when instead of a lone, hurt and diasporic wolf turning up at Stonehaven's gates, a peaceful, book-loving, half wizard boy on the cusp of adulthood had strolled through the door with two wizarding friends by the name of James and Sirius. Two friends who refused to see Remus become something other than anything but himself. When Malcolm had clocked on that his exploit was going to be fruitless, when the Alpha Dominic showed his favour and liking to the boy leading Malcolm unable to hurt the lad, but still being too prideful to go back on his word in the face of wizards, the duty of teaching Remus anything had fallen to Jeremy's shoulders, though his father would be sure to accept any praise or thanks given. And so, the journey of a lifetime began.

Remus and Jeremy had found it hard to connect in the beginning. Jeremy was older, a young Clayton, still vicious and slightly feral, would follow him around and glare and snap his jaws at Remus if he stood too close, and both men were quiet, reserved and found the intricacies of socialisation just out of reach… But Sirius and James suffered none of these. Sirius, in record timing, won a young Clayton over, and the two, like they had done with Remus all those years ago in first year, broke down Jeremy's walls methodologically with easy banter and well meaning deprecating jokes. Without any of them knowing, spring had flowered into summer and summer had faded into autumn, and as the leaves at Stonehaven began to crisp orange and flutter to the floor in swirling dives and dances of chilly wind, Remus received his first and only guest while in his stay at Stonehaven.

Jeremy remembered, vividly, the first time he saw her, standing at the gate, luggage and battered trunk perched at her small feet, blinding red hair windswept with a single oak leaf caught in a lock by her ear, blush and a constellation of freckles highlighting the beauty of her toothy smile. Oh, he remembered meeting Lily Evans alright. He remembered that day better than he did most. Jeremy had been smitten before she even got around to introducing herself and requesting to visit Remus. Lily had been his first love, the kind of first love that is without reason or logic, all consuming, bottomless and immortalised forever in ones mind through the scent of a certain object or a quickened heartbeat. Perhaps he had the same effect on her, because it did not take long for them to fall into a whirlwind of secret smiles and skimming hands. However, as it always does, autumn died to winter, and their snow storm came in the form of his father, Malcolm.

Malcolm had never been shy about vocalising his distaste for the 'fairer' sex. Worst of all, most of their kind echoed his sentiment. To him, women were good for only one thing, breeding strong sons. You see, it was tradition. When the time came and the need for sons arose, a pack mate would spend the evening with a women from the outside world, most one night stands, others spent months grooming the candidate with full knowledge that they would leave, others… Well, they resorted to force, but that was behaviour mostly left to mutts.

When the deed was done and the women fell pregnant, the wolf would fall back, slither into the shadows, but watch they would. When the birthing process was complete, the wolf would slink back in, prowling like their namesake, under the guise of night. If the babe was a girl, it would be abandoned to the mother, or killed, never to know their father. Girls, in their world, were useless. They didn't carry the wolf gene, they were weak, just another body for more breeding. Or, at least, many of their kind viewed them in such a way. However, If the babe was a boy, he would be stolen, taken, absorbed into the pack to grow strong under their ways, never to know his mother. It was how things had been done within their kind for centuries. It was how Jeremy and his father and his father's father were raised. So, when all came to the head that it did, can you really blame Jeremy for not telling his father of his brief but memorable love with Lily? No… Because Jeremy would blame himself too much for anyone's opinion to make much difference.

Especially not when, as all young love did, it began to birth dreams and foreign ideas within Jeremy. Dreams he would have never even considered before. In time, with Lily besides him, he began to plan. He would elope with her, take a young Clayton with him, settle in a small house with enough garden space for his and Clayton's runs, have children of their own, boys and girls all equally loved, and they would be _happy_. His father was none the wiser to Jeremy's dreams or his affair with a woman his father would have hated. If there was one thing Malcolm detested more than women, it was magic, and Lily boldly represented all that was good in both categories.

James, the lovable goofball who was loyal to a fault, covered for them. He made excuses for missed dinners or overlooked duties Jeremy had forgotten in his quest to spend time with Lily. He even went as far as staging a relationship with Lily to keep Malcolm's suspicious eyes even further away from the pair. The trio never even told Remus or Sirius, though Jeremy was sure Remus had his suspicions, in fear that Malcolm would somehow find out and either hurt or kill Lily to teach his errant son a lesson he wouldn't soon forget. Knowing his father like he did, it would have been irrevocably painful, infinitely bloody and outlandishly extravagant. Jeremy couldn't let that come to pass. So, if he wanted to stay with Lily like he so deeply did, running seemed his only option. Which, with Lily's and James's agreement, would take place a week before they were due to leave back to Britain.

But, by then, his father had become more unhinged, more erratic. He had always been violent, foul mouthed and more than slightly psychopathic, but even Jeremy, who had become numb to the abuse thrown his way, was shocked at the turns he would take. The mutt hunts no longer slated his thirst for blood, only fuelling it. He began to snark, snap, mentally torture and degrade other pack members, all out of the eyes of their Alpha, Dominic Sorrentino. The day he tried to get a young Clay to kill a human women he had dragged back to Stonehaven and crippled in front of the boy, smearing her blood upon his face and laughing as he urged the young wolf to kill, was the day Jeremy knew this would only end one way.

Of course, in fear of Lily and their still tender relationship, for her life should his father find out before Jeremy could do anything, he had urged her and her friends to leave. In the beginning, she had stubbornly refused. Still, with a single promise that, when the time came, he would find her, he talked sense into her and that was the first night she had spent with him. The first and only night, in fact. Come morning, the promise humming on his lips as he watched them all drive away, was the only thing keeping him from running after her. Now, looking at the girl on the bed, he wished he had been a braver man, if he had of taken those steps, ran after them, if he had of stood up to his father sooner, if he had have known…

He never fulfilled his promise. The week after they left, Dominic Sorrentino died, leaving the position of Alpha wide open for the taking, a move his father had been salivating and hounding after for years. Jeremy, in a poetic sort of way, had been the only one willing to stand against his father for the position, not because he wanted it, but because he knew death and torment would come for the pack should his father win that fight. Bloodied, broken, barely holding on, Jeremy had won but refused to kill his father, another tradition he was adamant to turn his back on and Malcolm had been banished to the life of a mutt. In a shameful way, seeing him leaving Stonehaven, becoming a thing he had hunted and killed and loathed, it brought a sick sort of satisfaction to Jeremy more than his fathers death could ever bring. Perhaps he didn't do it for just reasons after all.

However, consequences came along with that fight. Jeremy became Alpha and being Alpha meant responsibilities bigger and more important than your own wants and needs. Running to Lily became what it always was and had been, a _boyish dream_. It was pushed back to next fortnight, when he and the pack was healed. It was delayed a month further, after they got rid of the mutt hunting on their territory indiscriminately drawing attention to them and their kind. It was postponed to next year, when his pack would be strong enough to survive without him. Dammit, up until last week, he had still been uttering that promise of finding her when Clayton was old enough, wise enough, to take over after he stepped down.

That was his problem, wasn't it? Pushing his own insecurities onto others, pretending it was for their needs and choices. He had done the same to Elena, letting her leave the pack with the mindset that she would eventually find herself back here, willingly this time, all the more grateful for the time and space provided… And yet, how did he even know she would come back? He didn't. Like he didn't know Lily would be waiting for him. No. The truth was he had let Elena go because he could not see the hurt in her eyes anymore and feel the guilt gnaw on his gut because he had a hand in placing her on this path her life had taken. He had never ran to Lily because, if she really loved him, where were the letters? The visits? The calls? If you love something, let it go and if it loves you, it will come back. He had lived by that saying and it had only ever hurt him further. As more time had passed, as the silence became deafening, Jeremy had been sure it had been a fling, at least on Lily's part. What could he offer her that her own kind could not? Nothing but secrecy and seclusion. Nothing. Lily deserved the sun, moon and stars, not a woodland enclosed in wrought iron gates.

What had any of this returned to him? A reclusive, withdrawn adoptive son who was hurting from abandonment and a daughter he had not known about. A daughter, who, by the multitude of scars littering her body that he had spied, had needed him time and time again and he had been no where to be found. No more.

Reaching into his trouser pockets, he plucked out his phone and without looking, hit the speed dial six, pressing the small device to his ear. It rang out like he knew it would, flicking to a fuzzy answering machine after a brief message, but this time, he left a message, not one asking for a call back, or one simply asking for a hint of life to see if the receiver was okay, but an order.

"Elena, it's Jeremy… Get back to Stonehaven, now. I'm not asking, I expect to see you by the weeks end. After you've come and helped, you can leave if you wish, but you will come."

He hit the hang up button and crammed his phone back into his pocket, tiredly rubbing at his eyes. He had not slept or ran in a full three days and he could feel the need for a shift tickling across his skin, as if a cactus was being rolled across his skin like a massage bar. When his hands fell uselessly back into his lap, his neck rolling as he stretched the tight muscle and finally looked back into the room, his eyes met green fields of emeralds.

Her breathing was still even, shallow. She was still wrapped under thick blankets, sprawled on her back, but her neck had twisted to his direction, half of her face swallowed by the plush pillow her head was laid upon, one lone eye, all his shape but Lily's colouring, staring out and straight at him, trapped between fluffy white pillow and ebony curls.

"This… Stonehaven?"

Her voice was gruff, haggard, jarring and deep. She needed a drink to parch her raspy throat, but Jeremy was too caught up in the moment to move to the bedside table and bring the glass to her, half afraid she would run if he dared twitch.

"I… Yes, you are at Stonehaven."

A set of rapid blinks seized her as she breathed in deeply through her nostrils, wincing when her side crunched when she tried to move to a sit.

"Please, don't. You're still healing. You move much more and you will undo the stitches and start bleeding again."

Jeremy rasped, swept up with untameable emotion as he slowly leant forward and placed a soft hand on her shoulder, easing her back into a recline. She didn't fight him but he had to fight the urge to leave his hand upon her shoulder, to feel the heartbeat flutter under her skin, to know she was real, right there, under his hand. Through out the years, as he often did, he had had dreams. Visions some would call them, a remnant gift from his own magical mother. Normally, they came as warnings to those he loved, those he classed as family.

He normally never ignored them, the compulsion to act to divert what he was shown heavy and hot inside of him. However, he had ignored the ones of Lily, and until his dying day, he would forever regret that. It had been nothing much, just two, one was just a flash of green and a heartbreaking scream that faded with the cry of a child. The other was Lily, standing before him, screaming, yelling at him, begging, but she had been put on mute, voiceless in the void she hovered in. He could only ever make out two words. _Find her_. He had always assumed they had just been visual manifestations of his longing for Lily, his subconscious telling him to track down his mate… Now he knew the truth. It was never Lily he was meant to find…

"Sirius?... Remus?..."

Her voice broke into a set of dry coughs that wheezed through her lungs. Jeremy snatched up the glass of water on the bedside, freshly poured an hour ago in the case of her awakening, and gently pressed the rim to her lips. She gulped it down like a fish released back into the ocean, so much so Jeremy was worried she would make herself sick, pulling the glass away before she reached the bottom. Her head fell back down onto the pillow with a blissful sigh of getting her thirst quenched.

"I'm sorry, they are not here."

Her head swivelled once more to gaze at him head on, eyes unrepentant as she soaked in his face with a child like curiosity. A simple flick of her tongue moistened her cracked lips.

"You… You're JD… Aren't you?"

Did she?... Yes, the way her eyes, unmoving and steady, held his, the curiosity mixed with slight hurt and abandonment, showed she was in fact asking the question hanging heavy in the air.

"My name is Jeremy Danvers. Sirius used to call me JD for short… It's been years since I've heard that nickname…Do you… Have they… You know who I am?"

The question was wrong, Jeremy knew that. It wasn't who he was that he was asking about, it was what he was to her, that he was trying to gauge her knowledge on. A twinkle in her eye, dark and somehow simultaneously bright, shone in the very depths of her eyes.

"I… I turned. Sirius, Remus… They figured it out. Said I must have got the gene from JD and not James…"

Jeremy looked away then, eyes closing shut as the sting settled into his sternum. The underlying implication was as clear as sunrise. Until her first shift, she, and subsequently Sirius and Remus, had believed James to be her father. Had Lily or James never come clean? Did he mean so little to Lily for her to completely wipe him away from her and their child's life?

"Have you spoken to your mother? Does she know you're here-"

She cut him off with her head lolling back, gazing up at the ceiling resolutely, voice deadpan of any emotion.

"James Potter and Lily Evan's are dead. They've been dead a long time now."

A lump in his throat blocked his airway, his chest tightened and he swore to any god who would listen that he saw a flash of green on the back of his eyelids, heard the scream echo in his ear. When he spoke, it was nothing but choked and chopped words.

"How long?"

She refused to look at him again.

"Since I was fifteen months old."

So, Lily had not wiped him from her life, she had not had the chance to call or write letters, she had never lived long enough to tell the girl the truth. James either. And the lie the trio had started had become the truth in their death and his absence and ignorance. Jeremy did not cry, tears did not come easy to him, but right then, right there, faced with a daughter who he had all but left defenceless in a world of hungry predators because he had preferred ignorant bliss, he had to fight back the flood that was cresting on his eyelashes.

He felt a soft hand on his knee, gentle and calm, long fingered and thin. Looking down, he traced the hand back to the only person it could have been, but his guilt and self loathing could not admit it to be, the girl, as she had moved over the bed slightly, just enough to reach him. She smiled then and he saw Lily at that gate all those years ago.

"My name's Harry… It's, ugh, It's nice to meet you."

His hand folded across her own, dwarfing her digits and swallowing them into the palm of his hand as he squeezed back as harshly as he dared.

"It's nice to meet you too."

She pulled away after a long moment, groaning as she tried to push herself up the bed further so she could look at him without wrenching her neck so much. This time, when he tried to ease her movements, she did fight him back with a jerky shuffle away from his hands.

"I… I wasn't asking if Remus or Sirius was here… I was trying to tell you they're in danger. I…"

She growled deeply as a sharp twinge skittered up her side when she settled. She breathed in heavily through flared nostrils, breathes quaking and sore.

"I turned. Shifted. Whatever you call it. Remus, Sirius… They tried, they really did, but they couldn't handle me. My wolf, it's different to Remus's. It's different to whatever they've seen before. They had no clue…"

Jeremy tried to offer the glass of water back to her to ease her croaky words but she snarled as she batted it away.

"No, there's no time. They're in danger… Remus figured it out first, said it must have been this JD fellow. Sirius, he left to search you out and to get help."

Jeremy frowned.

"I have not seen Sirius in years."

Harry gave a grim, jerky nod.

"I know. He didn't message or send word back, me and Remus got edgy. Remus left soon after to see what happened, to see if he made it here and had just been swept up… Only he never sent word back either. I waited, but nothing came."

Something satin smooth reached out and skimmed across his mind, threading along that little tendril of his own magic inside him, loosely linking. Jeremy pushed the feeling aside, trying to focus on the matter at hand.

"So, you followed."

It was a statement more than it could ever be classed as a question, but still, Harry gave a little incline of her head in the affirmative. However, that little skim of something foreign touching his own limited magic tightened its grip… Or his own thread tightened around the feeling, it was hard to tell, but the results where profound. As she spoke, voice adrift in memory, it was like he was staring through her eyes, living it himself. Perhaps she housed a little of his own Kogitsune foresight, perhaps the two had felt the familial bond and had momentarily joined to share like two raindrops crossing paths… But the perhaps and questions meant nothing in the wake of what he saw.

"I… I did. I made it to the outskirts of this town before they jumped me… The mutts. They were hiding at your boarders, ready."

 _Harry stepped off the crowded bus, smiling as she breathed in fresh air free from sour human sweat and unnatural stale condensed heat of being trapped in a small place filled with other travellers. Plucking up her duffel bag from the balding bus driver who had freed it from its own prison in the carrying apartment underneath, she rolled her neck as she began to journey out of the bus depot. She would never willingly step onto a bus again, not after the three hour torture she had just been through._

 _The crowd around her began to disperse, thinning, families trekking to the taxi service lined out front, haggard teens heading into other buses and the odd old couple slowly tumbling down the the road in a little ramble. Still, as Harry took her first step out of the depot, she felt a familiar heat prickle at the back of her neck. She glanced behind her but saw nothing but people going about there business. So, weary, but still determined, she shook it off and began her trek into town._

 _It only took her ten minutes to reach the welcome sign, a cartoonish, gaudy thing that all small towns and villages tried to portray of welcome and warmth. Across the board was a sprawling forest, a little family of bears congregated around the trunk of the closest evergreen, all looking lush and too green and too merry. Across the forest in bold, curving, golden letters read 'Bear Valley Welcomes You!'. From the maps she had found on google and the limited research she had done, Stonehaven was located somewhere in this little rustic town, somewhere in the south. Coming in from the north, which is what she had done, meant she had quite the walk to get completed before nightfall, which was quickly descending upon her. Of course, she could use her magic to help the journey along, but she didn't know whether Stonehaven would great her as friend or foe, and she needed every scrap of energy, magical and otherwise, should the need to fight arise._

 _She only got a step passed that tacky sign when, from the tree line over the road, she heard the distinctive sound of a twig snapping under paw. Her head slowly swivelled, her gaze levelling at the tree line opposite her, and then she saw it. A glint. And another. And another. And another. Five sets of eyes… Wolf eyes._

 _She ditched her duffel, dropping it unceremoniously at her feet. The thing would only weigh her down, containing only clothes, and all her necessities, the things she could not do without, where safely stuffed into her messenger bag that she had used a sticking charm to glue to her person. Merlin forbid some muggle tried to steal it from her._

 _There was a moment of silence, just one second, before her feet skidded into the opposite tree line, the sound of growls and howls and padding paws echoing after her. They flanked her left side, the boarder to Bear valley, and when they began to round her backwards, she had no other option but to retreat. Shit._

"They knew you were coming…"

There was no other explanation for what he had seen. Through the memory, they had waited until Harry had broken away from the crowd, had let others pass the very same road she had gone to travel down, and the timing was all too perfect to be a coincidence. What was most worrying, however, was the implication of it. Sirius and Remus had gone missing, giving Harry the obvious drive to come to the very place they had disappeared in, in which she had done… This was never about Sirius or Remus, they had not fallen to accident or caught in a mutt brawl as Jeremy had first hazard a guess, this was about Harry. They were the bait to lure her in.

"I kept trying to get in, to get to Stonehaven, to find Remus and Sirius, but there were too many of them and they had the privilege of home ground and knowledge of the layout on their side. I broke through their barrier about a month ago."

 _Harry paced along the damp, dingy motel room she had booked on the outskirts of Bear Valley, her bags already packed and ready to go. No doubt those bloody bastards would track her down, they had time and time again, and that left Harry with the only option of keeping on the move if she should want to stay out of their clutches. Yet, she couldn't fully retreat, Sirius and Remus were in Bear valley, she knew it, she could feel it in her bones. She couldn't leave them here._

 _Still, she was running out of options. She had tried crossing through the river that snakes in through the east, thinking the water would cover her and what remained of her scent well enough to sneak her in… The mutts had been waiting at the bank. She had tried looping down south to cross over the little mountain range that bled into Bear Valley, the mutts had been waiting at the only pass. Merlin, she had even tried to get a simple taxi inside, but after passing a remote road, they had descended upon the car, ran it off, killed the driver and very nearly killed her too in the process. Furthermore, it didn't matter how many she killed, more would replace them. She offed one for killing the taxi driver and the next night, two took his place. It was how they worked. It was driving her insane._

 _There was only one other plan she could think of, and if it went wrong, it would go spectacularly wrong. Still, if she couldn't get in from the ground… Perhaps she could get in from the sky. Harry's gaze flickered to the motel's bed, eyeing up her broomstick, the only thing she had left unpacked. Let's see how high wolves could jump…_

"You've been here an entire month?"

The memory cut off, but Jeremy did have the distinct feeling of flying through treetops, not to high because the night was clear and she would have been visible, but high enough off the ground to keep from the wolves hounding after her heels. Then there was a distinct pull in his stomach, as if he had fallen, but he couldn't be sure.

"Six, if you count the ones I spent trying to get bloody in here. That, however, doesn't matter. I-"

She broke off into another set of harsh coughs, chest rattling heavily when they subsided and she tried to take a lung full of air. Jeremy found himself moving out of his seat to perch upon the edge of the bed, bringing back the glass of water to ease the irritation. After another hearty drink and a moment to breath, she carried on.

"I finally got in and found Remus's and Sirius's scent trail, it was old but still there. I tracked them down to an abandoned wearhouse on the west creak. It was empty…"

 _Harry stood crouched at the edge of the parking lot of the warehouse, sniffing, enshrouded in shadows, the moon her only witness that night. Remus and Sirius were in there alright, or at least, they had been. So had the mutts. After two weeks of none stop hunting and trailing old scents, she found herself here. This was the freshest scent she had come across, and despite its sketchy environment, she couldn't let this opportunity pass._

 _She had already waited until nightfall, hoping the darkness would lend her a hand in sneaking in and out, should the warehouse be inhabited. She had run across the scent this morning, but had spent the day burying her messenger bag. She couldn't take it in to fight with, but she very well couldn't just leave it lying around either. So, in a small little children's park at the edge of a barbers shop, the park empty because the children were in school, Harry had stashed her bag in a shallow hole dug under the roundabout, with a small notice me not charm placed upon the overturned sand and dirt for good measure._

 _Harry scented the air once more, just to make sure. No, there wasn't any fresh mutt smells, but she still wouldn't put it past the bastards to be laying in wait somewhere with the wind to their back. Still, this was the best chance she had come across to find Sirius and Remus…_

 _Stealing her courage, Harry slinked to the rusted door to the warehouse, casting a fugitive glance around her before she twisted the door knob straight off, delved her fingers in and pulled free the lock bar. The door creaked open, but Harry only let it swing open a few inches before she sidled in._

 _All that greeted her was silence, cloying dust and the odd scatter of a rat or mouse. Nothing. Nada. Jack fucking shit. The warehouse was empty. Harry tried to tap down on her immense disappointment by telling herself there could still be clues to their true location, but her pessimism was quickly becoming a crescendo. Straightening her spine, she prowled over to the barred windows on the other side of the vast room, but halfway there, something crunchy and flaky crumbled beneath her foot. She lifted the appendage and looked down. Her heart stoped._

 _Got'cha!_

 _Written in dried blood was that lone word, laughing mockingly at her. The warehouse door behind her banged open with an almighty clank and Harry whirled around. The mutts skulked in… Her hand tightened around her wand as the front ones leapt._

"It was a trap."

Harry gave a humourless chuckle, her eyes slanting sardonically.

"Aye, and I walked into like a fucking fool. I had just enough time to shift and run before more came…"

The next memory he was hit with was too fuzzy to picture fully, just hints, pieces, feelings. Running. Pain in her flank. Looking back to see an arrow or… No… Needle? Protruding. Dizziness. Slowing down. Slipping. Gone.

"I don't remember much, I think they tranquilliser'd me. All I know was I woke up in another warehouse, in a fucking cage, with mutts watching me. However, Remus and Sirius were there too…"

 _Consciousness and dead sleep came to Harry in flashing and jarring shots of reality. She couldn't remember much, they kept sticking drugs that knocked her out into her before she could fully gain consciousness. She remembered trying to accio her wand, but the world was spinning and she couldn't string together a single thought. She remembered the coldness, concrete on bare skin, naked apart from a thin, rough blanket being thrown about her shoulders. She remembered spying Remus and Sirius opposite her, undrugged, locked in thick, iron cages. She remembered trying to crawl to them, but she was trapped in a kennel too. She had passed out before she made it to the bars._

 _Yet… Yet.. The mutts hadn't taken into account her metabolism, higher than most, kicked into unholy speeds since her fist shift, and soon, the drugs that they kept pumping into her wore off faster and faster as her body adapted. She was a quick learner, and it wasn't that hard to pretend to be knocked out. Their most lacking oversight? Not realising Remus was a wolf not like their own…_

"I don't know how long I was there, but Remus waited for the full moon to shift, broke out of his own cage and freed me and Sirius from ours. However, one of the mutts that hadn't been killed howled and…"

 _The warehouse was an unprecedented mess. Wolf parts laid strewn across the floor, blood splattered across the brick walls and high, tin ceiling. Moony's cage was just bits now, gnawed and slashed chunks. Sirius's and Harry's were broken by an errant swipe from Moony after he had broken free, having aimed for the mutts but missing, ending with their freedom. Moony, growling and feasting was hunched over corpses, eating away, the sound of bone and meat squelching ringing in Harry's dazed ears._

 _Still, Lady Luck was never on Harry's side. One of the mutts Moony had batted into the wall had just enough strength left to lift its head and release a piercing howl… Another from outside, far away but too close for comfort joined its lonely song… And another… And another… And another… Closer… Closer… Closer._

"More came."

Harry came back to herself and blinked away the memory.

"They came in droves. So fucking many…"

She frowned, and Jeremy went to reach for her hand but she flinched away, pulling the limb up to her chest as if he had burned her. Her eyes darted around the room before they settled upon him once more, her breath hitching as if she had forgotten he was there. He would not lie, the action hurt more than he could vocalise or put into words, but he knew she had not meant it the way it had been taken. Could he really be surprised? He had not been there through all of this, through her childhood, through all her inevitable heartaches, no matter how small or big they were. He. Had. Not. Been. There.

But he was here now and by god, he would make that count. Slowly, so she could see his hand coming, he tried once more. This time she let him, and he found her squeezing back just as hard as he was.

"Moony let loose, and I did my bit, but it wasn't enough. They just kept coming and coming and coming."

Trying to pull her away from the dark memory, he tried to divert her to something happier. Escape. It had ended. She had survived.

"How did you get away?"

 _She was back at the edge of a creak again, Sirius pushing and pulling her down the sloping bank to the waters edge, the roar of a wrathful Moony and dying wolves blistering out behind them. Before she could pull Sirius in the water too, he snatched her up by her shoulders, forcing her none too gently to look him square in the face._

 _"Run. Don't look back. Keep running. You hear me?"_

 _Harry shook in the cold nights air, naked as the day she was born, knee deep in frigid creak water. Hurt. Confused. Scared, but with the urge to run back to the battle taking place behind them so strong and violent, to sink her teeth into the people who had trapped them, drugged them, that she had to dig her feet into the sharp rockbed to keep herself from turning tail and shifting._

 _"Aren't you coming? What about Moony? He can't fight all of them off and-"_

 _Sirius shook her by her shoulders, cutting her off._

 _"No. We'll hold them back. Listen to me Harriet. Find Stonehaven. Find their pack. Find them and do not leave until either me or Remus comes to get you, okay? You find JD and you glue yourself to his fucking side, you understand? You stay right there until you see our faces. No phone calls, no letters, Just us at their door, nothing less, okay? Okay?!"_

 _Harry violently shook her head, her thoughts jumbled and scattered like the howling wind around them. Or, maybe, that was the dying mutts._

 _"But, aren't the mutts the Stonehaven pack? I'm confused… It doesn't matter. I can't leave you, not like this! Not when-"_

 _"You will! You must! This is not the Stonehaven pack, I promise you that, but it's too complicated to explain it now. Go. Run. Find JD and his pack and show him these memories. Show him. Promise me Harry… Promise me!"_

 _Tears leaked down her face as she nodded._

 _"I promise."_

 _Sirius pulled her into a tight hug, his voice soft and calming against the shell of her ear. Him gently stroking her hair was the only thing holding her together. She clung to him, scared that if she let go, he would disappear and leave her all alone in this foreign, nightmarish place._

 _"We'll catch up Harry. Now run and find JD... Find your father... Oh, and give him a message for me…"_

 _Sirius leaned in closer, whispered a short, clipped sentence before he pushed her into the creak, yelling for her to run. Harry obeyed, shifting quickly before she took off into the night, sticking close to the water._

"Moony carved a path through them into the woods, Sirius lead me down it, ordered me to shift and run through the creak so they couldn't track my scent. Made me swear to find you, to find Stonehaven and not to leave until either one of them came to get me. I ran, I didn't want to, but he made me fucking swear and he knows I don't break my oaths…"

Her grip on his hand turned bruising as her own anger began to crest on the surface of her skin. Jeremy simply ran his thumb along hers, watching as the tremors died down. So… This is what that was. Sirius had made her show him the memories… To validate what she was saying. Jeremy had needed no validation.

"It was the right thing to do…"

Harry pulled her hand away and forced her self to sit up fully. She didn't grimace, or growl, or snarl. It was if she welcomed the pain, needed it to distract her from her thoughts.

"It was the cowards way… Doesn't matter, a group of them tracked me anyway, chased me into town and cornered me in an alley."

And there was the end of the circle, the journey.

"That's where Nick found you."

Her eyes cut to him from wondering over to the window to look at the noon sun, eyes hooded and keen.

"The guy who was about to snap my bloody neck? His one of yours?"

Jeremy gave an apologetic smile.

"He thought you were a mutt… He did not mean… It was a mistake I am sure he feels guilty about."

Harry ran a tired hand down her face, pulling harshly at the skin as she exhaled slowly.

"I'm sorry… When I woke up here, I thought you guys were the mutts again, that I'd not ran far enough…"

She looked so lost then, so alone with the sun casting her skin in golden, orange hues, eyes large and unfocused. Jeremy edged closer, delicately grasping her by the shoulders. She looked up at him through her eyelashes.

"It's alright. You're safe here…"

The answering smile was sad and guilty.

"I'm not… Not really… And neither is your pack… Sirius, he told me to pass along a message before he made me run. It doesn't make sense... At least not to me. It's just two words, But maybe you'll understand it, maybe we can go find Remus and Sirius before they're hurt…"

He didn't have the heart to argue with her, to put any doubt into that frail hope that Remus and Sirius had made it out of that onslaught, perfectly healthy and well, and were simply laying low. There was, after all, a reason he had sent Harry to him and his pack alone. _For protection_. And if Sirius thought she needed their protection, it either meant theirs wasn't strong enough, or they wouldn't be around to offer it. Either prospect would not sit well with a still injured and lost Harry. So, he latched onto the message, because in the end, he couldn't bring himself to lie to her either.

"What is it?"

This time it was different, he was still in that room, holding Harry, and yet he was also in her memory, as Sirius pressed close and whispered in her ear. As Harry spoke, both their voices blended into one ominous being that put a hangman's noose around his neck. Their necks. Two words have never unsettled him as much as they did then.

" _Malcolm's coming."_

* * *

 **A.N:** SURPRISE! I know this chapter was a little late coming, but life has been busy lately with school and essays, but I'm on summer break now and should be able to get back to writing! I hope this chapter made up for your endless patience, at least in part.

 **TO ANSWER A CERTAIN P.M:** Yes, Jeremy is, in fact, half Japanese. His mother was Japanese, at least, he was in the books. (Which, as I have said, I am blending in with the T.V show). One of the major things that really pissed me off in the T.V show, one of the only things actually, was the white washing of Jeremy (Although this is nothing against the actor who did play him, he did a really good job, it's just the principle of it). If, for some strange fucking reason, this bothers you like it bothered a certain member who sent me a huge rant, please leave. Just leave XD.

 ** _TWO BIG QUESTIONS FOR YOU GUYS!:_**

1\. Some people have brought up the idea of instead of having a Clay/Fem!Harry pairing in this fic, to swop it for a Nick/Fem!Harry one. To be honest, I've been toying with the idea (I adore all of Stonehaven's pack), but still, I can't fully decide on whether to switch or not. So, I'm leaving the choice up to you brilliant readers. I will put a poll up on my author page, so please check there and vote (However, it should be up tomorrow, as at the moment it keeps glitching into demo mode). If you don't fancy the poll, leave your vote in a P.M, or even better (Yes, I'm a greedy author XD), leave it in a review! I will let the poll and voting carry on for a whole week, and then I will shut the poll down and any P.M's or Reviews with a vote placed after that day will be invalid. By the end, I'll chalk up all the votes and let you guys know the winning team next chapter. The reason why I need to know so soon is things begin happening by the end of next chapter, and the whole of the following one, that I will need the pairing for.

2\. Whose P.O.V do you wish to see next?

 **A QUICK NOTE ON THIS CHAPTER** : Before confusion sets in, Harry was not sharing her memories with Jeremy, not intentionally at least, that is why she was talking, telling her tale, rather than just showing him silently. Jeremy, however, thinks that she was as he doesn't have much experience with her kind of magic, or experience with others with his own kind. I can't say too much without giving spoilers out, but it has a lot to do with their Kogitsune natures, (Which will be heavily dived into later) and Jeremy's mother/ Harry's grandmother. Don't fear too much, all will be explained in time, I just wanted to give the heads up before people began to get confused.

 ** _Once again, thank you all for taking the time to read this, and I really do hope you are enjoying the ride as much as I am enjoying writing it!_**


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